Clean ‘Jack Mas’ will reap rewards in China’s fight against corruption: graft-busters
Businesspeople who refuse to pay bribes will benefit down the track, Communist Party’s anticorruption watchdog says
There will be good days ahead for “businesspeople like [Alibaba founder] Jack Ma” who say no to paying bribes, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog said on Tuesday, shifting some of the focus of the national anticorruption campaign from bribe-takers to bribe-payers.
The shift underscored a major dilemma for Beijing – its reliance on bribe-payers to bring corrupt officials to justice, a governance expert said.
An article in China Discipline Inspection Daily, a publication under the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, businesspeople who relied on hard work and innovation to get ahead would reap dividends down the track.
Under the headline “For the Jack Ma[s] who pledge to never bribe, there are good times ahead”, the article said: “We believe the Jack Ma[s] who pledge never to bribe compete on their competence, their willingness to suffer … their hard work, as well as their willingness to embrace change and transform themselves. For these people, there are good times ahead.”
The article follows Ma’s warning to executives in Beijing late last month that bribery was a line in the sand that they should not cross.
Read more: Say no to bribery, Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma warns China’s entrepreneurs
Addressing the Third World Zhejiang Entrepreneurs Convention, he urged federation members to work hard to maintain good relations with the government, but to stick to the basic principle that bribes should never be a part of their activities.